If you don’t know the answer and want to know, or you know the answer but still are curious as to what I may blabber about this read on.
Both songs are set to 5/4 time signature, which is relatively rare in western music. The first sample is a popular Jethro Tull song titled Living in the Past. The second one is a famous Jazz composition Take Five of the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Now the question is does this map at all to Carnatic Music, and why should it, and who cares?

To answer the last question first – probably no one cares. I will admit that this post is a result of contrived attempts at finding things in western music (the limited view of it I have) that are common with Carnatic Music. I was intrigued by the link between that Blue Oyster Cult guitar riff and an uncommon Carnatic raga – however tenuous it was (the idea behind that post was not a deliberate one). So I thought Hey maybe it would be nice to find stuff like that and post them on my blog – a regular, recurring theme. Well, it turned out to easier said than done given my limited exposure to both worlds. But like a reader forced to plod through reading a series that has lost steam, I force myself to post this anyway. This may be the last of post of its kind – but I will keep my fingers crossed. But I ramble needlessly yet again …

Getting back to the 5/4 signature, I am specifically curious about how the rhythm of the two samples may map under Carnatic Music rhythmic framework. First, I must confess that I am not conversant with western music theory, and am still a fit flummoxed by the time signature. A 5/4 signature seems to imply that there are 5 beats in a bar, and the note duration that constitutes a beat is a quarter note (1/4th duration). A 5/8 would mean that there are 5 beats in a bar and a 1/8th note duration constitutes a beat.

It is immediately tempting to say – Ah this means it is like a tala with 5 aksharas and each akshara is sub-divided into 4 or 8 internal beats – i.e. catuSra gati. But I find that this is not true although I cannot say that with any authority. The denominator in the signature does not indicate how the beat is divided, it simply seems to indicate the relative duration of a beat. It seems possible for the 5 beats in a 5/4 beat to be spaced such that one can think of it like a 5 akshara tala (say khANDA Eka). But it also seems possible for the 5 beats to be used such that it is sort of like khaNDa cApu.

And in some cases like above, it does not readily translate readily to either.

If you take the above two songs, the overall rhythm sort of goes like this:

1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2 1-2

or in carnatic terms
ta ki Ta ta ki Ta ta ka di mi

This is quite clear with Take Five as the bass and piano follow this (1-2-pause 1-2-pause 1-pause 1-pause). It should also be clear in Living in the Past if you listen closely. It is not only followed in the initial flute part, but also when the singer Ian Anderson sings:

Maybe I am wrong, but this sort of a gait does not seem to directly correlate to anything in Carnatic Music. Of course, there is no question that this sort of combination is used by mridangist when accompanying a song in khaNDa cApu or playing in khanDa naDai i.e. where the rhythm is grouped in fives. They probably try all sorts of permutations and combinations. But I am talking about the pure rhythmic aspect of the above pattern – its inherent gait. To me, it doesn’t match the predefined gatis in Carnatic music. The closest I think could be khaNDa cApu, which simply goes

1-2-1-2-3 1-2-1-2-3orta-ka-ta-ki-Ta ta-ka-ta-ki-Ta.

However, as you can see, this does not seem like a perfect fit.

First, the rhythm in the samples and that of khaNDa cApu seem to be complementary to each other. In our samples, the beat starts with triplet(s) and ends with double, but khANDa cApu starts with a double and ends with triplet.

Second, our samples above if interpreted in carnatic music terms seem to actually take 10 “internal beats” as a unique set i.e. ta-ki-Ta-ta-ki-Ta-ta-ka-di-mi, which seems different to me from iterations of khANDa cApu grouped together in twos.

That seems interesting to me as this has a feel of a unique gait i.e. gati rather than simply a super-set of khanDa cApu. We are told that gatis for 6 and 8 are unnecessary as they are handled by tiSra (3) and catuSra (4). Some argue that even sankIrna (9) is unnecessary as it is taken care of as a multiple of tiSra. From a pure mathematics point of view, I agree but from the aural feel of a gati, I disagree after this. It seems that 6, 8, 9 and here 10 can be divided and presented such that they have as unique a gait as 3, 4, 5 and 7. The innate gait of the above samples do not seem like khaNDa cApu. Nor do they seem like khanDa Eka. However, I can certainly put talam for these samples in khanDa Eka (doing khanDa cApu seems harder!) but again only as a way to keep time – not as a reflection of the rhythm of the song.

As I mentioned earlier, I think that mridangists have all combinations including this in their repertoire. But I wonder if one such combination can be exclusively “highlighted” like in these samples, and hence can becomes a new cApu :)! Nomenclature anyone?

(Note: All rights again obviously belong to original artists. The samples above are for illustrative purposes only. Clip #3 is again Dave Brubeck. Clip #4 is an excerpt from the song Woman Tonight by America)

PS: Oh btw, the title New carnatic “chops” from western music is a bad, half-hearted pun on the word cApu.

Awesome post as usual. Clip 3 is a 7/4 (or 7/8..cant make out by listening alone) time signature, much like Misra Chaapu (or Chops 😉 ) You must have heard Pink Floyd’s Money. That’s 7/4 too.
Clip 4 sounds like regular 4/4 to me.
And I think the 5/4 pieces are analogous to Khanda Chaapu. You are right about the complementary bit, but I have noticed that in some complex Pallavis, the lyrics/beat dont match exactly with the 1-2-1-2-3 beat. So I think its the overall sense of 5 beats that makes it Khanda Chaapu, and not strictly the 1-2-1-2-3 pattern.

Yes 7/4 or 7/8. I cant tell either. And yes Money is also 7/4 although Gilmour apparently said in some interview that it is 7/8. For Money, to me, it seems more apt to put tisra triputa – much much slower spacing I think. This Dave Brubeck one (called Unsquare Dance) is more like miSra cApu.

Woman Tonight is indeed 4/4. That was supposed to be a trick question. So much for that ;). But it did trick me for a while a few days back. I was remembering it from memory, and knew it was a funky beat where emphasis is not like standard 4/4 (it is reggae based beat). I was sort of remembering it wrong and it seemed like a “chop”, but eventually realized it was just 4/4. You can even hear the 4/4/ beat in the back. But I still don’t quite know how the 4/4 is exactly used for the main rhythm – I just love the “off beat” feel to it.

I’m afraid all this Carnatic Western equivalence stuff goes above my head. I’m trained to some extent in Hindustani Classical, and am an amateur listener of Western Classical, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about here.

And my pathetic BSNL broadband connection doesn’t help either!

Point being: I would love to understand more and will keep trying to. Thanks for the post.

mahendra – w.r.t rhythmic framework, carnatic music has quite an elaborate system. I am not that familiar with the Hindustani genre, but I believe this aspect is not as elaborate there (same for western). Hindustani focuses much much more on the melody i.e. bhava/feeling, rasa etc.

The terms khanda chapu, misra chapu, khanDa Eka, tiSra gati etc. are all of course very carnatic specific. However, the basic concept of gait (gati in carnatic lingo) of the rhythm is universal, and this post is also about that.

If it helps, consider this. In the above two songs, the underlying gait/gati is a repeating rhythmic pattern of 10 pulses divided as 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2 1-2. Sometimes the drum/bass/piano follows it, and in the Tull case even the words sort of follow it. Also, in these cases, it is a fairly consistent, repeating pattern i.e. not many internal variations to the outer grouping of 10.

Now, in carnatic music, you have five varieties of gait/gati depending on how rhythmic fragments are grouped: In sets of 3 (tisra/trisra), 4 (catusra), 5 (khanda), 7 (misra) and 9 (sankirna). Each set also includes double, quadruple of the basic number. So a pattern that has 10, 20, 40, 80 pulses/beats would all fall under khanda gati.

One way to think of these different gatis is to think about the different gaits of a horse. The walk, trot, canter, gallop of horse look and also sound (hoofs) different from each other. Similarly, these gatis are different, and each establish a different feel to the general flow of the rhythm of song.

Note: we should take the comparison only so far. Gallop means full speed compared to walk. This does not mean sankirna is full speed compared to catusra. In other words, tempo is orthogonal to this.

I don’t know if this clarifies things. If you have any questions/doubts, please feel free to ask, and I will try to answer to the best of my ability. Or I will simply ask music expert krishashok to do it 😉

I am very poor at theory. Too lazy to read it up actually. I simply go with what I hear. If Arun writes a book on indian music theory (which unlike the others is likely to be readable) I will learn theory

I am not at all familiar with Carnatic music. I tend to agree with you that Hindustani doesn’t have as much elaborate rhythmic framework as Carnatic, after reading this post! 🙂

I was an amateur Tabla player, playing different ‘taals’. But all this 1/4, 5/8, etc. reminds me of algebra, and I shun away from it! And all the 1-2-3 does nowadays, is remind me of the 123 nuclear agreement! 🙂

I absolutely loved your way of correlating the different gatis to the horse! It was wonderful.

Just one last observation: aren’t many of Jethro Tull’s songs composed in such offbeat rhythmic patterns?

I don’t know if Tull songs have too many unusual rhythms. I was looking for western songs with the equivalent of khanDa gati (so 5/4 or 5/8 in western) and miSra gati (so 7/4 or 7/8 in western) and my reference was this wikipedia link. I don’t know how comprehensive that list is – but there aren’t that many Tull songs there. In fact there weren’t that many songs I knew and could easily relate to !